It’s that time of year again…the time to celebrate all things creepy and spooky. However, the only thing that should be scary right now is your Halloween costume, not your marketing results. We hear lots of B2B marketers complain that marketing automation is too expensive to see value for money on their ROI, so we want to bust this myth and more! Check out these 5 marketing automation myths that need to be swiftly demolished.

Myth 1: Automation does all the work for you

Whilst marketing automation takes all the pain and suffering out of having to manually run multiple campaigns and follow up on statistics, you still need to continuously come up with fresh ideas and new campaigns.  It should be used as a tool to help you strategise and organise, not be left to do all the work for you. Unlike a classic movie mummy, you can’t just wrap up the body in bandages and leave it to rot. You need to keep paying attention to your campaigns, otherwise, you’ll see your mistakes come back to haunt you.

Myth 2: Marketing automation is just for email

Just like an awkward Halloween party where everyone turns up wearing the same thing, marketing automation also needs an element of diversity to keep it interesting.  Most marketers are familiar with email marketing and complain that they are not seeing enough value for their money on their ROI. This is because they are using just 10% of a marketing automation strategy’s entire potential. Other elements of your marketing automation include social media, lead generation, lead nurturing, metrics, analytics and management activities.

By using varied automated marketing strategies, you can nurture business and gain new prospects. The reason content marketing is so successful is because it works across all channels to align your marketing as a whole.

Myth 3: It makes your marketing sound robotic.

What were you, dressed as a robot for Halloween? Stop being half-hearted and lazy. If you put in the effort with your marketing, you won’t sound like a robot. With a number of tools at your disposal, including dynamic content and visitor tracking, you can create personalised marketing campaigns based on what people are looking at on your website. Marketing automation allows you to take your marketing data and apply it to your message in an original and unique way. Don’t be scared to address customers directly – personalised emails have a much higher engagement rate.

Myth 4: Marketing automation is all action-based.

Whilst, marketing automation allows you to run all of your marketing in one place you still need to monitor what’s working and what you can improve on moving forward. After all, if you only base your marketing solely on how many leads you’re getting converted, then you have no idea what is working within your marketing and what’s not. The benefit of marketing automation is that it can report across every stage of every channel so you can see what inbound, outbound, content, social and messages are working/not working. That way, you can improve your marketing strategy moving forward. Using marketing automation week-on-week just to send a tried and tested newsletter does not a good marketing strategy make.

Myth 5: Marketing automation is for new prospects only

Don’t let your marketing automation die post sale. Marketing automation works best when the entire customer lifecycle is considered. Obviously there is an emphasis on lead generation and nurturing, however supporting connections throughout their time with you is important. Businesses who use their automation to keep in contact and touch base with existing customers have proven to have a higher customer retention rate.

So, stop being scared to push the limits of marketing automation and improve your existing marketing system. These few little tricks are sure to work a treat.